Strangest duet ever? Aladdin Sane and the Old Groaner perform the wonderful Christmas medley, ‘Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy’, on the 74 year old Bing Crosby’s ‘Merrie Olde Christmas’ TV special filmed on 11 September 1977.
Who thought of this odd match?
Bowie and Bolan. It was complicated.
Bolan was complicated! A Rolls Royce owner who couldn’t drive. A dyslexic who never read the books which inspired his early hippie lyrics. (Instead, his wife read the books to him.)
A man who wrote the most stoned-sounding ramblings, but disliked dope and acid. (Yet, later cocaine abuse would dilute his talent.) An arrogant egotist who was nevertheless loved by those who knew him.
David Bowie gave away one of his greatest songs to another band! The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame described ‘All The Young Dudes’ as one of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll”.
‘All The Young Dudes’ became a major hit for one of Bowie’s favorite bands, a British act called Mott The Hoople, who were on the verge of breaking up.
Iman. Supermodel and role model.
In addition to her global fame as gloriously beautiful and the first African woman to win the support of the Western fashion industry, Iman is an entrepreneur, activist and philanthropist. She has authored two books and has been a TV star as well as an actress in thirteen films.
Iman is one of the select few people famous enough and distinctive enough to be known by one name, but her full original name is Iimaan Maxamed Cabdulmajiid or, in English, Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid.
She always felt a conflict between her status as a Muslim woman and her profession as a model Continue reading
The campest video ever! In 1985, David Bowie and Mick Jagger dueted on a hastily recorded version of ‘Dancing In The Street’, the 1964 Motown classic co-written by Marvin Gaye.
The Bowie/Jagger version was recorded to benefit the Live Aid charity and was shown on July 13, 1985 at the two Live Aid concerts – London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Stadium.
David Bowie on Top of the Pops: “Let All The Children Boogie”
At 7:25 pm on July 6, 1972, over a quarter of the British population watched David Bowie sing ‘Starman’ on TV.
Here was a man with make up – an orange haired bisexual in a comic book version of a spaceman’s jumpsuit.
A beautiful, androgynous man who camped it up, draping his arm suggestively around his guitarist, Mick Ronson, the pose wonderfully displaying Bowie’s nail-polish.
For some, David Bowie’s most vivid persona is not Ziggy Stardust or The Thin White Duke, but Jareth the Goblin King, star of the movie Labyrinth, which hit theatres on 27 June 1986.
Is that the weirdest thing about Labyrinth? Or is it that a generation of girls seemed to discover their sexuality by watching this children’s movie?
An androgynously beautiful man from Mars comes to Earth and wins a fervent following, being acclaimed as a Messiah, but ultimately is killed by a mob.
Sounds familiar, sounds like the basic storyline of David Bowie’s album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which was released 40 years ago this month.
But that is also the basic storyline of Robert Heinlein’s science fiction classic, Stranger In A Strange Land.
On June 6, 1992 David Bowie and Iman were married in a church service at the American Church of St James in Florence, Italy.
(In a bizarre coincidence, that was the 20th anniversary of the release of Ziggy Stardust!)
They had already married in a civil ceremony in Lausanne, Switzerland on 24 April, with just two witnesses present and no guests.
David and Iman had sailed down the coast of Italy on a six-week boat trip the previous year and both had a special fondness for Italy.
Once called Zowie Bowie, Duncan Jones – David Bowie’s only son – has become a successful film director, whose most recent movie grossed $147 million and was critically acclaimed.
David Bowie and his son are close and Duncan confirms that Bowie has been a “major influence on me”. Of course, Duncan has never adopted the Bowie surname, so he Continue reading
David Bowie as a vampire! That’s one of the attractions of the cult classic The Hunger, released in 1983. The movie is famed for Bowie’s part and also for several other aspects, including its impressive opening sequence, featuring Bauhaus.
Bowie and Catherine Deneuve play an elegant, glamorous vampire couple who live in luxury in New York. The title, The Hunger, refers to the way Bowie and Deneuve survive, by feeding on the blood of victims.
David Bowie is not active in music at the moment, but this year he has inspired three movies, a ballet and much more, including both Tommy Lee and the 2012 Pulitzer Prizewinning poet, an assistant professor at Princeton.
Professor Tracy K. Smith’s book of poetry, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Now that’s cred! The book’s title of course named after Bowie’s hit song from the Hunky Dory album.
Tracy K Smith 2012 Pulitzer Prizewinner
She calls Bowie the ‘Pope of Pop’ and credits him with inspiring her:
“What was so powerful about Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era to me was the sense
that the imagination is capable of creating a whole new world
and a whole new sense of self and
I really have always just been so grateful for that.
I wanted to find a way of acknowledging that in my work” Continue reading
The outstanding guitar on David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album was played by the superbly talented Mick Ronson, who died 19 years ago today, on 29 April 1993.
Mick was acclaimed by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest guitarists of all time and voted by the readers of Creem as the 2nd best guitarist of 1974 (second only to Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page).
David Bowie:
“As a rock duo, I thought we were every bit as good as Mick and Keith or Axl and Slash.”
“He was really up there with the great guitar players … superb, absolutely superb.”
On April 24, 2015, David Bowie and Iman had been married for twenty three years, an exceptional achievement among celebrities.
In 1992, the glamorous couple were married in a civil ceremony in Lausanne, Switzerland where Bowie lived at the time. (Later, David and Iman would marry in a church service in Italy.)
Both Bowie and Iman are TIME Fashion Icons.
The marriage was scandal-free and characterized by an extremely upbeat public profile. It seemed to be have been a storybook romance.
The British state-owned property company honored David Bowie in London on Tuesday March 27, 2012 with a plaque to commemorate his 1972 album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”
The front cover of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
David Bowie Starman
